


But to Carry On

by Lulzy (likelolwhat)



Series: For the Love of a Meme [11]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, Female-Centric, Fingerfucking, Obscure NPC, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:11:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likelolwhat/pseuds/Lulzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gilfre is sure the stranger who shows up on the road outside Mixwater Mill is a bandit. Though Leila is anything but, she still steals the miller's most valuable possession: her heart.</p><p>(cheesy summary is cheesy...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	But to Carry On

**Author's Note:**

> De-anoning from the skyrimkinkmeme, [this prompt](http://skyrimkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4580.html?thread=9303268#t9303268). Was also written incorporating [this prompt](http://skyrimkinkmeme.livejournal.com/4941.html?thread=10138445#t10138445).

Leila stumbled down the road, dragging her bad leg behind her. Her entire conscious mind was divided into two functions at this point: limping through the pain, and keeping up a string of often-redundant curses against giant-kin. She was dimly aware that she had just crossed a bridge, less attuned to the fact that she was headed north, and barely registering to begin with a big wooden structure looming out from behind the trees to her right.

Thus, it was understandable that she didn't see the loose stone in the road.

"Stupid big-ass ugly mother— ARGH!"

~*~

Gilfre looked up from her work, unsure what she had just heard. Peering towards the road in the dwindling evening light, she could just barely see a dark lump lying on the cobblestones just past the corner of her house. As she squinted, trying to pick out if it was a person, an animal or a big rock that had fallen from the cliff above, the lump flipped over and started waving its limbs. Rather like the turtles that were sometimes found in the ponds across the Niben River from her home city of Leyawiin, Gilfre thought.

She dropped the log that she'd been about to cut back onto the pile and walked across her property, curious. But she was also cautious. She was lonely, yes, but not lonely enough to save say, a bandit. No matter their misfortune. So she was as quiet as she could be, using the shadow of her house as cover as she approached the person.

It was... well, she couldn't tell rightly whether it was was a bandit or not, but she could tell the person was a woman, and that she was certainly unfortunate. Even across the distance between the corner of Gilfre's house and the road, she could tell the woman's left leg was badly mangled, maybe broken. The woman had stopped flailing, and was lying on her back, breath coming in great gasps that were visible in the cooling air. She was wearing a patchwork assortment of badly-skinned animal hides, but the only weapon Gilfre could see, as she left the safety of her house's shadow and inched across the grass, was an iron sword. So no adventurer, then — those people were all rich. Bandit.

Gilfre drew her iron dagger. Normally she'd never, ever confront a highwayman (or woman), but she was fairly confident that she would outmatch this one. She hauled lumber for a living, all by herself, and it showed in her lean muscle. This stranger was lean too, but it was from starvation. Maybe she'd been kicked out of her group for some reason or another.

~*~

Leila was staring up at a blue sky rapidly turning black, despairing. She was going to die out here, alone. Friendless. Without a penny to her name. She'd never live in a mansion like she'd always wanted, even by marrying some rich old lord or lady (her back-up plan after her small business selling doilies had failed to go anywhere). The marry-into-money scheme had crumbled to dust after she'd realized how... average she was, but she'd never lost hope of finding someone who preferred a trophy wife for reasons other than beauty. What those reasons might be, she'd never know now.

Cyrodiil was a sinkhole of misfortune where it was a bragging point how many debt collectors one had evaded, so she'd moved north. _Skyrim still has an economy,_ they'd said. _In Skyrim you'll be rich just by popping into a barrow every now and then._ Well, fine. They hadn't mentioned the walking corpses. That ruined dungeon-delving forever. They also hadn't mentioned a damned war. With the Empire's trade routes cut off, the price of close to everything had skyrocketed.

She was just glad most of the Nords thought she was a Redguard and left her alone. If they'd known she was Colovian, she suspected the prices would hit the moons and keep going into Aetherius.

And! They hadn't mentioned the giants. Trolls were bad enough, but at least trolls she could jab at with a torch and they'd run away. Giants were huge, easily upset, and stank even worse than trolls. Her first up-close encounter with giants was going to be her last—

A face swam into focus above her.

A woman. An _Imperial_ woman. A very, very attractive Imperial woman. Hot damn, the afterlife was lookin' _good._

~*~

Gilfre finally got up the nerve to stand over the bandit, and what did she get? Not the pleading she'd expected from the cowardly scum of Nirn, but a silly grin, half-lidded eyes, and...

"Oh, _Dibella_. I'm coming..." the woman moaned. Then she passed out.

Gilfre recoiled, eyebrows knitting together. That... wasn't the kind of reaction she thought a bandit would make. Perhaps she'd been mistaken. Perhaps the woman just needed help. Perhaps she was insane. No, it was probably her banged-up leg. Gilfre sheathed her dagger and hoisted the maybe-bandit over one shoulder as she would a log, turning towards the workers' old house. She'd put her up in one of the beds, bandage her leg, and leave her in there. If she was still there by the time Gilfre woke up at eight the next morning, and hadn't picked the lock to the miller's house and murdered her in her sleep, well, then she would see. If the woman was benign, Gilfre thought she'd ask that for help about the mill for a few days in return for her hospitality.

 _Stupid workers_ , she thought for the umpteenth time. She shouldn't have to ask random bedraggled people for help!

She pushed open the door to the abandoned house with one hand, shifting the stranger on her shoulder with the other. By the Eight, she slept like a log and carried like one. Once inside, she blinked against the dusty darkness and shuffled forward and left to where she remembered the nearest bed, once Skjoldr's, to be. Though she nearly tripped over the empty chest at the end and fell flat on her face, she managed to lower the unconscious woman from her shoulder and arrange her on the dusty blankets. She grabbed another hide from Haakon's old bed nearby and laid it out on top, leaving the injured leg uncovered so she could tend to it. It was badly scraped and cut and the ankle swollen, but nothing was broken. Curious, Gilfre turned over her patient's hands; saw the broken skin with sharp pebbles lodged in the gashes. It looked like she'd fallen down a cliff or something and kept running. Only a few things could terrify a traveler like that, but not pursue far, and one example happened to have a camp nearby. _Giants_ , Gilfre concluded.

She drew some water from the river and grabbed some cloths from her own house, working on the wounds well past her usual bedtime. But at last her patient was as healed as she could get without a professional (or even an amateur) to tend to her. Gilfre left the house, which had a person sleeping in it for the first time in months, and crossed to her own, curling up in bed after only a quick bite of stale cheese.

~*~

Aetherius _sucked_.

That was Leila's first thought upon awakening. Her entire body felt heavy, there was dust in her nose, and her leg throbbed like never before. She couldn't see anything, even her own nose, in the darkness that pressed in on her.

After many long seconds of confusion and a peculiar kind of betrayal centered on her belief that Dibella had teased her with Her face and left her in the most uncomfortable (and boring) place imaginable, she realized that she was far too thirsty to be dead. Her throat had the distinct stickiness that came after drinking a healing potion. When had she drunk a healing potion? The last thing she remembered was seeing — _no, hallucinating, to be exact_ , she thought sadly — Dibella's face. And now she was in an unfamiliar location, lying on a very lumpy mattress, with a very itchy blanket on top of her still-clothed body.

She felt very heavy, but forced herself not to sleep again. Instead, she practiced wiggling all her fingers and toes in succession. She discovered immediately that, though her control over her limbs was fine, moving her fingers even minutely stretched at the cloths wrapped tightly around her hands. She didn't even remember hurting them, as the pain in her leg had been so much worse, but... now that it was more a steady throb like her heartbeat than a lance of agony whenever she moved, she could concentrate on smaller injuries.

Not that she wanted to. She closed her useless eyes, trying to go back to sleep, wondering if she would wake up in yet another new place.

Five minutes passed as she forced herself to lay still and drift off. Five minutes passed as she tried to ignore the itch on her elbow she couldn't scratch. Five minutes as the tingle in her nose came, went and resurged without ever culminating in a Kynareth-blessed sneeze. It was _torture_.

Something creaked across the room, faintly. Her eyes snapped open. Another creak, then the sound of a handle turning and the room was blasted with light.

Leila gasped and instinctively tried to hide her face from the blinding sunlight, only managing to roll dangerously close to the edge of the bed. She heard a woman click her tongue, then the light receded. Footsteps, and another, softer light came. Lamplight. Leila chanced to open her eyes, but she couldn't see much with her face buried in her out-flung arm. More footsteps, brisk, accompanied by a soft swish of the hem of a dress or skirt. A warm hand touched her arm and rolled her over with surprising strength. Leila looked up.

It was Dibella, again, except the face that she'd thought was Dibella was older, more weathered and with a blockier jaw. A mortal woman, then. But still lovely to look at.

The woman, heavily muscled along the arms from some kind of work, looked down at Leila with an unreadable expression. She wore a modest, homespun dress in muted greens and browns, with an iron dagger at her hip. An average woman to anyone else, but Leila had never been anyone else.

"Hello," she said uncertainly, when the stranger failed to speak. "Er, where am I?"

The woman arched a rough, unplucked eyebrow. "Mixwater Mill, in Eastmarch." Leila must have had a blank look on her face, because the woman — a miller? of course — sighed and continued. "... _Skyrim?!_ " as if she seriously thought Leila didn't know what country she was in.

"Okay," Leila said, still lost but in a different way now. "I... did you find me on the road?"

"Yes. You were sitting there with a mangled leg, so I hauled you in here before the wolves could eat you."

The hard expression on the miller's face was unsettling. Really unsettling. "...Thanks, then. I'm Leila."

The other softened slightly. "Gilfre. I run the mill." She did not extend her hand. "What were you doing out there, Leila?" There was a test in her voice.

"I have no idea," Leila said honestly. "I came to Skyrim seeking my fortune after Cyrodiil collapsed too far to stay. I've been roaming around here and there looking for work ever since I crossed the border... er, three weeks ago?" She couldn't remember. It might have been closer to four.

Gilfre nodded, looking sad. "And you found none, didn't you?"

Leila looked down at her hands. "...No. Falkreath is a ghost town, and Riften is in the grip of some crazy old lady. I guess I didn't kiss her arse well enough, because the guards ran me out two hours after I went in. Thirty septims poorer, too!" She twisted her lips into a grimace, still ashamed that she'd fallen for that scam. "I figured I'd try for Windhelm, but I went the wrong way and walked right into a giant on the road. Ran for my life. Fell down a cliff. Scraped myself up something fierce, but at least the giant didn't follow me."

"Hmm. They're fiercely territorial but tend to stick to that territory closely. I'm wondering why one was out on the road." Gilfre didn't look too believing of her story.

That was fine, she couldn't quite believe her own misfortune either. "I saw it had an arrow sticking out of its chest. Maybe someone attacked it."

Gilfre hmphed. "The Companions probably, they're the only ones dumb enough to take on a giant on purpose. Probably the only ones who'd live to talk about it, too. So, that's when you ran back out on the road and collapsed, huh?"

"Tripped over a cobblestone."

"Ha! What a way to go down. You're damn lucky I work so late, you'd be an easy meal for a wolf or sabre cat if I hadn't heard you."

"Yes, thank you again. I'm afraid I don't have much to offer..." Leila gestured at herself — she knew she was a mess. She felt bad about not being able to pay back the life-debt, but she was utterly, completely broke. She highly doubted a miller would want a patchwork of rough hides she'd tanned herself (many either too well-scraped or not enough) into armor, or a rusty iron sword. And though she thought Gilfre was very, very attractive, she didn't think the other Imperial would like any talk of what amounted to prostituting herself. She was too shy and inexperienced, anyway.

"Not materially, anyway." But Gilfre was looking thoughtful. Leila hoped she wasn't a secret Daedra worshiper or something; that would be awkward. "I think that with a little more meat on your bones, you could help me out with the mill a bit. A few days. I'll consider the debt settled then and you can be on your way to Windhelm. Or..."

"Or?"

" _Or_ , if you'd like to earn some septims to get back on your feet, you can stay longer. Mill-work is great to build muscle, too, which you'll need to survive here in Skyrim. Unless you have magic...?"

"Not a bit," Leila admitted. "I can make a flame. Sometimes."

"Voice of the Emperor?"

"Yes, why?"

"It'll serve you better than you know against many enemies." The look in Gilfre's dark brown eyes — like the earth — was reflective. She obviously had experience in that department. After all...

"Do you live out here alone?" Leila said suddenly, breaking her host out of her reverie.

"Yes. Used to have five good men who worked the mill with me. Then this war started and they all ran off. Idiots with mead in their blood." But Gilfre's voice wasn't particularly biting, just sad. Lonely.

"I will help you. I don't know how long I can stay after the debt is paid, but I at least owe you that much."

Gilfre nodded, and set about unwinding Leila's bandages. She would scar heavily on her leg, and would carry fainter ones on her palms, but the healing potion and the thorough washing Gilfre had done the night before prevented infection. Leila would be whole again. The throbbing even went away after the cloth was loosened, indicating that she would be able to move about sooner than she'd thought.

They tried it, Gilfre supporting the younger woman in a few laps around the dusty and disordered house, then slowly letting her get farther and farther on her own as her strength returned. Afterward, the two Imperials ate a hearty breakfast (well, it was a snack for Gilfre, who had been up far longer than Leila) outside in the late-morning light, watching the river flow by and making idle chat. Leila learned that Gilfre was actually just a few years older than Leila herself, not a decade like she'd thought at first. Working fourteen-hour shifts outside year-round did things to her skin that she would never be able to reverse. She also learned that the miller had been born in and spent her formative years in Leyawiin, but her family had moved to Skyrim just before the Great War ended.

~*~

Gilfre, in turn, listened to Leila chatter with a small smile. The girl — and she couldn't stop thinking of her as much younger, with such smooth skin and energetic personality — seemed perfectly content to treat Gilfre like they were long-lost best friends and not new acquaintances. Gilfre wasn't about to correct her; something about the Chorrol-raised Colovian (a surprise — she was sure the girl had been at least mixed-blood, if not full Redguard) was refreshing.

After a while though, she saw that the day was moving on without them and she needed to get at least some logs cut if she had any hope of getting herself enough food for the winter. The price of lumber was going up with the war, but so was everything else, especially the essentials. Several of the more productive farms in Haafingar and the Rift had been looted by desperate soldiers of their respective factions over the summer, she'd heard from Ingmar. The man who bought her lumber every month and sent it by raft to resale in Windhelm was her only regular visitor. Before the war, she got a guard patrol by every day; now, the only time she saw Stormcloak blue was when a unit had reason to take her backwoods road on the way to some battle or another. She was just lucky the bandits hadn't realized what easy pickings she was yet. Even if she could hold her own hand-to-hand, she wasn't dim enough to believe a raid wouldn't have at least one archer or mage along.

"Come on, up," she broke in as Leila was reminiscing on some childhood prank. "We've got work to do."

~*~

Gilfre taught Leila to know her trees first. Firs and pines were most common in the immediate area, but several hardy birch grew on the hillside above the mill as well. The women walked the path up to where the rock face overlooked the road, the miller pointing out the tell-tale signs of rot in one of the birches and advising her new apprentice of the moment to let those trees be unless they looked like they were going to fall onto the road or the mill's buildings.

Then she demonstrated selecting good trees to fell. She used to have the men do this, she said, and drag the result back to the mill, but had been forced to do it herself since they'd run off. The pile of already-primed wood had lasted her until Ingmar came again later that month, then she'd had to cut, fell and drag all by her lonesome.

Leila couldn't help with the tree-felling yet, since she was still recovering, but after the lesson among the trees she was able to demonstrate her axe-swinging skills at the wood chopping block back at the mill. With her hands still tender, it was more difficult than usual to get the grip on the axe handle right, but Gilfre was visibly pleased with Leila's technique nevertheless. Her swings were sure, and soon they had enough good firewood to last at least until Gilfre considered the debt paid.

Over to the sawmill next, and if Leila was tired she did not show it. She looked satisfied, instead, basking in Gilfre's easy-coming praise. The miller guessed she hadn't been complimented much in her life. The poor girl wasn't a legendary beauty, this was true, but, then, neither was Gilfre. The Colovian clearly knew a thing or two on many subjects, and was a hard worker as well.

Gilfre only let Leila saw a single log, which Leila protested.

"Well then, put some meat on those bones and we'll talk about hauling wood!" Gilfre snapped, but there was a smile on her face. "Come on — I'll put dinner on and we'll eat. Fresh batch of eggs in from the chickens."

Leila looked vaguely disgusted at the thought of eggs for dinner, but followed the miller inside her house.

Unlike the abandoned worker's house, Gilfre's dwelling was well-lit, well-organized and had not a speck of dust in sight. An elk's head was mounted over the fireplace, and a wolf snarled forever above the table. There were rugs on the floor and hung up on the walls.

"Asger was an avid hunter," said Gilfre softly, watching Leila look around.

"Asger?"

Gilfre sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "One of my workers who ran off to join the war. Skjoldr's brother, Jurgik's cousin. He was the only one who went to the Legion, and the first I got a letter of condolence about."

"Oh. I'm... er—"

"Don't," Gilfre said shortly, "just don't. What's done is done, and you had nothing to do with it."

Leila deflated and said nothing more, just sat down at the table and looked at the spines of the books on the shelf opposite. Most of them she had read before, but the title of one unfamiliar to her caught her eye. She slid off the bench and went over to pick _Alduin is Real_ up.

Gilfre's voice came from behind her, and Leila saw that the Nibenese woman had turned away from the cooking pot. "Don't know why I haven't used that one for kindling yet. Haakon left it behind, I think. Man was obsessed with old Nordic legends, even enough to read _that_ drivel from cover to cover." She regarded the thin volume with contempt. "More than once. I don't know what one could discover reading it twice that they couldn't just by scanning the first sentence."

Curious now, Leila opened the book, read the the first sentence, paused, and read it again. She promptly dropped _Alduin is Real_ on the shelf and went back to the table, rubbing her aching temples. "I... see."

Gilfre's lips quirked into a wry smile. "Wasn't lying, was I? Haakon was the least sober of the lot at any given time. Always going on about wrestling bears or waving his sword about. Both of them. And he couldn't use either!" She laughed.

Leila laughed along through her twinges of jealousy. She knew well enough how Gilfre might've drawn that conclusion. She was angrier than she should have been that Gilfre was left all alone now. It was none of her business, but that a man could just up and go like that when it was painfully obvious Gilfre needed help... it was aggravating. It also brought back the guilt Leila had been struggling with since leaving her aging parents back in Cyrodiil and coming to Skyrim. She had abandoned them, even if her brother and sisters were around to take care of them, even if they had given their blessing for her to seek her fortune. Even if there was no way for her to help support the family after losing her job as a barmaid ( _Maria is prettier_ , her boss had said, _Maria will bring more customers and not sneak ale from the back room when it's slow!_ ), she still felt guilty.

She couldn't exactly go back, though, not with Pale Pass closed. Something about a mass murderer sneaking across and getting involved in a huge battle near Helgen, was the last rumor she'd heard in Riften before getting thrown out. Leila counted herself lucky that she hadn't been behind the murderer and been blocked when the Pass closed, or worse, run into them.

Gilfre finished boiling the eggs and brought them over with two slices of eidar cheese each, setting Leila's plate in front of her before sitting down to her right. They ate in silence. By the end of the meal Leila was debating whether the eggshells were considered edible or not, as she was still very hungry. She wasn't used to eating so much, having been forced to go without too many times in recent months, but now that she had access to good, if simple, food she felt like she had to make up for her missed meals.

It was a dangerous line of thinking, she knew.

Gilfre dabbed at her lips with a napkin, a surprisingly Imperial gesture from her; Leila thought the other woman was more Nord-like than any other member of a foreign race of men she'd met in Skyrim. The country had a way of making everyone assimilate, she believed.

"Well," the Nibenese woman said, putting her napkin down, "it's getting on in the day. The workers' house is free for you to sleep whenever you want to turn in. I think I'll go to bed early."

"Goodnight, then." Leila got up, reluctant to leave the warm, lived-in house to sleep alone surrounded by dust and overturned chairs. _You are being kicked out_ , a small voice said in the back of her mind, but she tried to squash it down. Gilfre had every right to her privacy, and she had been living alone since the start of the war, besides. To ask that she change her routine now, for a woman she'd known for all of a day...? _Stupid Leila_ , the same small voice said. _Stupid_.

"Mmm, Leila?" said Gilfre just as the Colovian opened the door and let a burst of frigid night air into the house.

Leila stopped, half-turned around. "Yeah?"

"Do you think, maybe..." Gilfre let out an awkward cough. "You don't have to sleep over there. You know, I never did get around to cleaning up the mess the men made."

Leila raised an eyebrow. If she was asking what Leila thought she was asking...

"If you would like to stay over, my bed is large enough for two." Her face was redder than a full Masser.

She was! "I'd like that," Leila murmured, shutting the door and shivering as the house warmed again. "It's cold out there."

Gilfre smiled a bit and started blowing out every candle but the two near the bed. She drew the shield over the fireplace so the flames would continue to provide warmth but not as much light as before. Then, without a pause, she drew her dress over her head.

Leila was facing Gilfre's back, and so got an unimpeded view of her muscled arms, well-sculpted legs, and the peculiar scar running from over her shoulder right up to the edge of her breast-wrappings. Leila stepped forward, and though Gilfre's head turned so she could look at her out of the corner of her eye, the miller otherwise did not move. The Colovian reached out a hand, paused, and gently stroked her finger over the rough, raised edges of the wide healed-over wound, feeling the other woman shiver. "This is...?"

Gilfre reached over her shoulder to put one calloused hand over Leila's, stopping her exploration. "When I was first starting out in mill-work, I wasn't as sure-footed as I am now. I slipped as I was pulling up a log, and fell. This," she patted Leila's hand where it lay over the scar, "was from a branch that wasn't sawed properly. It would've just been a bruise otherwise."

It was Leila's turn to shiver, thinking about rough wood digging into Gilfre's skin deep and wide enough to make such a scar.

"There was an infection," Gilfre continued. "I nearly died that year."

"Mm." Leila didn't know what to say. She slipped out her hand from under Gilfre's, but just as her fingertips left the miller spun around and grasped it in her own. Being faced with the near-naked body of the woman she had mistaken for Dibella (even in her delirium) made Leila blush and freeze. Her eyes fixed themselves to somewhere around Gilfre's nose, not wanting to look down lest she never stop staring.

"Leila..."

"Yes?" It came out as a squeak, and she wanted to slap herself.

"I know when someone is attracted to me." It was a simple statement but it cut right to the heart of the matter, like the millsaw itself.

"I— yes. 'M just afraid."

Gilfre's eyebrow inched up, but her face was gentle. "Afraid? Of what? I'm not going to reject you, if that's what makes you hesitate."

"No. No no. I'm — well, I'm not a virgin, not exactly, but..."

"But?" The miller looked like she knew exactly what was meant, but was she going to force Leila to say it anyway? But there was no cruelty there, just a firm push to express herself.

Perhaps she was reading too much into it. "I've never been with a woman," she said, voice small.

"Ah." Gilfre looked over Leila's shoulder, eyes taking on that peculiar mist that signaled her mind was far, far away from her body. "I see. If—" and she returned to herself, "—if you do not want to start now, I understand. It could make things awkward."

 _It will be more awkward if you're looking at me with that loneliness in your eyes for the next few days..._ Nords, she had realized since coming to Skyrim, were more likely to have casual sex than Imperials, and the Sons of Snow could part on friendly terms easier. That still didn't mean that she could _apply_ that knowledge with Gilfre, who was more likely to behave like a Nord given her long residency in Skyrim, for no matter how much she reassured herself it was okay, it still didn't feel quite right for her still-ingrained culture. But since she was going to live in this desolate land... And she _was_ ridiculously attracted to Gilfre. "No, no, I want to. It's just difficult. I've never been good with new things."

Relief shone in Gilfre's eyes for just a second before she was back to neutrality. "That's all right," she said. "I like you, Leila. I wasn't sure at first, but you remind me a lot of myself, if things had gone differently for me. Don't worry, I'll walk you through it."

Leila grinned. She was lucky to have met Gilfre. Not just for the usual saving of her life reason, but also because if she was going to give her last virginity to someone, she was blessed to have it be a woman she was quickly falling in love with. "Yes. Yes, I'm ready."

Gilfre nodded, smiling more easily than ever before. Without another word, she grasped both of Leila's hands and leaned in. Their foreheads touched, Gilfre staying like that for many long seconds, just looking into Leila's eyes, before the miller wrapped her arms around the younger woman, drew them flush together, and kissed her deeply.

There were too many sensations. Leila clung to Gilfre as well, hand brushing against the branch-scar, still-clothed breasts pressing against Gilfre's wrapped ones, their legs tangled together. The miller's hands were running up and down Leila's back. And the kiss! Gilfre tasted of woodsmoke and cinnamon, lips slightly chapped but moving so expertly against her own that it didn't matter.

Then Gilfre moved, backing Leila up against the door with a dull thud and deepening the kiss. Her tongue slipped in, and Leila didn't know what to do for a heart-stopping second, before she remembered that kissing a woman wasn't so very different from kissing a man (just ten, _no_ , a thousand times better), and her own tongue joined the fray.

Gilfre spread Leila's legs with a nudge of her bare knee, and one hand stroked down the younger woman's hip before trying in vain to get at her sex through her fur armor. Leia moaned in frustration into Gilfre's mouth, and they reluctantly parted. "Clothes, now," Gilfre gasped out, but Leila already had the top part off and was wiggling out of her pants. When they at last pooled down around her ankles, she stepped out and kicked them away to her right before Gilfre was on her again, resuming the breath-stealing kiss and slipping two fingers into the waistband of Leila's panties. She tugged them down just slightly, Leila shivering in anticipation through the desperate kiss, and pressed her thumb firmly against Leila's clit while the others plunged into her cunt.

Leila saw stars. Her head banged back against the door, breaking the kiss but exposing her neck, which Gilfre set to work on while the Colovian made incomprehensible noises that she thought were clearly "yes," "please," or "yes, please." Gilfre's hands in her cunt, stroking the sides while searching for her special spot, and her thumb flicking against her clit... Leila could hardly breathe anymore. Then Gilfre found that sensitive spot inside her and stroked it firmly while her thumbnail scraped that little nub—

Leila's vision went white, then black, then blurred back into focus as her legs gave out from under her and she lost all sense of self in one long, glorious moment. She could vaguely feel herself clamping down on Gilfre's hand while the older woman held her up with her other arm.

Her legs trembled as the sensation of being inside a body returned in waves, and Gilfre slowly pulled back as Leila regained the ability to stand.

"Oh, Gilfre..." she panted, getting a rare cat's-cream grin from the miller.

"Needed that more than you thought, yeah?"

"Yeah..." Her eyes snapped back open as she realized that she'd gotten off but Gilfre hadn't. Poor Gilfre, who'd been so lonely. _Time to fix that_ , she thought. She stepped forward into Gilfre's space, initiating another kiss and starting to guide the miller back towards her own bed. Her steps weren't sure yet, and Gilfre ended up doing the guiding, stepping backwards and pulling Leila with her. She bumped into the chest at the foot of her bed and stepped neatly around it, falling back onto her fur-draped mattress and neatly lifting the slighter Leila on top of her.

Leila knelt between her lover's legs, which spread wide to allow her access. Gilfre had fluffy curls where Leila was shorter and straighter, and the Colovian found herself admiring the dripping cunt in all its beauty. She leaned in, smelling the sweet scent of woman, and braced herself on Gilfre's taut thighs. She lowered her head and licked a long line from Gilfre's hole, up her folds to the waiting clit, flicking around the nub with the tip of her tongue.

Gilfre moaned, and Leila glanced up, though she did not take her mouth away, to find that the miller had tugged off her wrappings and had both hands on her own breasts, stroking her nipples to rapt attention.

Leila turned her eyes back to Gilfre's curls and smiled into her clit. She plunged down to lap at her cunt proper, now bracing herself with only one hand while the other lazily flicked at Gilfre's clit every few seconds. She wanted to draw this out, give Gilfre the best fucking of her life. Forget everyone else, it was only her and her lover-of-the-now.

Gilfre tasted even better at her other lips, sweet but not too sweet, all around a taste she couldn't identify as anything other than: "woman". It was intoxicating. Gilfre was moaning so loudly now Leila would have been worried if they weren't in the middle of nowhere.

As it was, she pushed to make the miller even more vocal.

She drew back, wanting to tease Gilfre into a longer orgasm, but the miller abruptly wrapped her legs around the back of Leila's neck, and growled, "don't you dare stop now!" Her grip wasn't tight enough that Leila couldn't have slipped straight back instead of up, but she didn't try. If Gilfre wanted to be ravished, Gilfre got to be ravished. She set her tongue back on Gilfre's clit and sucked hard while her fingers pumped in an out of her cunt, curling to hit her special spot inside every time she pulled her fingers out. Within a few thrusts of her fingers Gilfre came undone, bucking her hips sharply up into Leila's face and tightening her legs around her head so hard that for a long second Leila thought she was going to suffocate in Gilfre's slick cunt. But then they loosened, boneless. Gilfre flopped back onto the bed with a final long groan, and simply lay there.

Leila finally pulled up with a squelch, feeling the wetness drip from her chin and pool in her breasts. She wiggled up Gilfre's body, lying down beside her. For a long time they simply stared at each other. Then Gilfre reached over Leila to the bedside table, where a cloth lay, and handed it to her.

"Thank you," they said at the same time.

Leila wiped her face, took a half-hearted swipe at her breasts, and flung the cloth off to the side. Gilfre had already blown out the candles, and in the darkness they reached for each other, each woman holding the other in her arms. Leila, being slightly shorter, tucked her head under Gilfre's chin, and the two of them drifted off.

~*~

Leila stayed three weeks after the debt was paid off, but when Ingmar came again she found that she had roaming in her bones, and so she parted from her friend and lover, the woman who had saved her life, reluctantly.

As for Gilfre, she wrangled a promise to visit again out of the Colovian before she left, which was given gladly. She couldn't make the wanderer stay, but at least Leila was doing what she needed to do. They had shared glorious weeks together, and made a lifelong friend of the other, and that was all that mattered. Even if Gilfre was left alone again, well, she didn't mind, because Leila had given her the best experiences of her life in that short time.

They'd meet again, Leila promised as Ingmar steered her and Gilfre's lumber down the White River towards Windhelm.

**Author's Note:**

> Leila is the Leila of [Identity Crisis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2559254) and [First Rule of Not Being a Virgin](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2563916), this just takes place earlier. She is not the Dragonborn, but exists alongside one (Lothario Nicchi of [Dysfunctional](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2582585) fame).
> 
>  
> 
> ~~why do i write so many imperials oh my god~~


End file.
